Chapter 3

Luke

Three years later…

The sun shone brightly on the water as our boat approached the docks. Elex stood next to me as we got our first look at our new home: Illyria.

"You look like you're about to pass out," I said, giving my much-shorter brother, Elex, the side eye.

"Me? You're the one who's been puking his guts out the whole way!" he teased.

"That was once!" I exclaimed. "Granted, I don't think it stopped for three days. I can't help it that Earth and Water don't mix," I grumbled. He laughed and threw his arm around me.

I'd been so relieved to find Elex when I arrived at the Alexandrian Legion. I don't know how I would have survived without him. We'd spent almost four years training together in the Legion, being forced to learn how to use our magic to kill.

We were both Mageians, users of elemental magic. My magic was Earth centric, while his was Air centric. Or rather, had been Air centric. Somehow, he had managed to unlock the ability to access all four elements, power that I didn't think he completely understood yet. Even standing where he was I could feel the force of his power beating at me, an invisible pressure against my skin. My brother was many things, but subtle was not one of them.

He had managed to Bond to a Somatophylakes named Helios. Somatophylakes (or Somas, as they preferred to be called) were shapeshifter guardians, able to take on the form of animals at will once they had found and Bonded with their Mageia.

Hel kept insisting that a Bond couldn't be created accidentally, but he and Elex had managed to do just that. The Bond had unlocked additional abilities for both of them. Hel was now able to change into the shape of various animals, while Elex, in addition to accessing all four elements, had also gained the ability to block the Elusians Suppression fields.

Accident or no, gaining access to those powers had helped save the lives of a large group of Mageians, myself included. After meeting Hel, Elex and I had agreed to help enlist other Mageians sent to the Machi Thanatos to support the war Illyria was waging against Alexandria. Unfortunately, our efforts didn't go undiscovered. A contingent of Elusians, led by our half-brother, Maalik Alexus, Crown Prince of the kingdom of Alexandria, attacked the stronghold while Hel and Elex had been out making a final sweep of the city before evacuating.

After freeing us Elex had taken especially bloody vengeance on Maalik for his past treatment of my people. Fuck, who was I trying to kid? He took vengeance for all the horrible things he had done to Elex, Erix and me.

Mageians in Alexandria were forced, under the guise of a religious Calling, to serve as sexual slaves to the more worthy members of society (meaning the Elusians). Maalik had arranged for me to be assigned to him for a Calling, but Elex had found out. He had knocked me out and taken the Calling himself in order to spare me humiliation and pain at my half-brother's hands. I still didn't know exactly what he had done to get the assignment changed; he had refused to tell me, but the Vestal who made the assignments in our Legion was known to sometimes trade for sexual favors. It was particularly dangerous because Vestals were supposed to remain chaste. Anyone found to be breaking that rule experienced a horrifying death.

I'd been almost insane with worry by the time I had received the second Calling. Religious Houses were essentially bordellos that existed on a spectrum, the color of the house indicative of the amount of damage a House permitted their clients to inflict on the Called. The House of Eros was a black house. Houses that dark on the spectrum catered to the most sadistic of pleasures. By the time the smarmy Vestal for our Legion had shown up at my door with a pair of Elusians to keep me Suppressed, it had almost been a relief to know that I'd be able to find out what had happened to my brother.

When I'd woken, naked and drugged inside the House of Eros, it had been to the sight of my brother hanging on the other side of a pane of glass, strung from the ceiling like a piece of meat. The wounds he had already endured turned my stomach. His face was almost unrecognizable, and he was covered with stitches and bandages that had bled through. The only way I knew it was him was the shock of white hair amongst his dark curls.

Then Maalik had entered the room. Even through his pain, Elex told Maalik that if he touched me, Elex would rip him limb from limb. Maalik had only laughed, confident in his ability to keep Elex and I Suppressed while he "played" with me. He boasted of how he had used my brother's body, and of what he planned to do to me.

The hours had been endless, and I hadn't been sure what was worse: enduring the torture Maalik inflicted, or having my brother witness it and knowing it was killing him that he hadn't been able to keep me safe from it.

I don't think Elex knew how his being there had given me strength, though. It kept me from succumbing to the mind-numbing despair that threatened to overwhelm me while under Maalik's control.

Everything had finally come to a head when Maalik had threatened to rape me. Elex had lost it. Somehow using his Air powers in defiance of Maalik's Suppression he shattered the glass that had separated us, sending dagger-sharp pieces of glass at Maalik. He hadn't killed him, but he'd hurt Maalik enough that he was in no shape to molest me any further.

The House had deemed our Calling complete, and Maalik had been unable to take any vengeance for Elex's defiance. The religious sects had final say on Callings, so there was not much Maalik could do, and he had learned his lesson early about complaining to the King.

They had no choice but to return us to the Legion. Our recovery had been slow, but eventually we had been medically cleared, only to have the Machi Thanatos announced.

When Maalik led the soldiers who invaded our safe house in Heraklion, Elex had made good on his promise to rip Maalik limb from limb with his power, but it had broken something in him for a while.

I swallowed hard and turned my gaze away from the approaching wharf as I remembered. I had seen many, many horrible things in my life, but what Elex had done to Maalik made me shudder. The sounds Maalik's body had made when Elex had pulled his arms out of their sockets with his power turned me green every time I remembered it. Maalik had been a bastard and had deserved to die, I just didn't know if Elex would be able to recover from being the instrument of his demise.

I saw a shadow approach from behind us and turned to see Helios approach my brother.

"You okay, kitty cat?" Hel purred in Elex's ear, taking his hand as we all stood looking at the city. It felt like an extremely private moment, and I squirmed in embarrassment. There were just some things I didn't need to know about my brother's relationship with his partner.

Helios was a Soma, one of the shape-shifting guardians of Mageia. Or they were supposed to be, anyway. According to Hel, that had been their role for thousands of years until the Elusian King of Alexandra figured the best way to stay in power was to enslave the Mageians. In order to do that, he had to eliminate the Mageian Tesseris ability to block the Elusian power of Suppression. That ability could only be unlocked by Bonding with a Soma.

As had happened with my father, Elusians caused unimaginable pain when they Suppressed Mageian ability to use magic. A Tesseris Mage could block the Elusian Suppression, which I'd seen in action when Elex and Hel had rescued us all from the invaders.

Alexandrian society had become reliant on the power of Mageians to function. Somas, however, had been deemed too dangerous to manage, and were considered expendable. No Somas, no Tesseris Mageia, no ability to defy the Elusians. To bury the knowledge of Somas, Alexandria had discovered a way to identify Somas genetically and begun a systematic genocide of all Somas under the guise of the Shaking Plague. My two younger sisters had died of the plague and their blood lay on our father's hands.

Everyone knew that the plague was an endemic fever that typically attacked kids under the age of five, but it had become increasingly deadly in the last two hundred years. What we hadn't known was that the plague hadn't actually become more deadly, but the Elusians had developed a blood test that identified children who would become Somas, and they had begun systematically killing them. Kids. They were killing kids to keep them from becoming Somas and prevent the next generation of Tesseris Mageia from developing their powers when they bonded.

Their plan had mostly worked, too. They had eliminated the knowledge of Somas from most of the known world as the Alexandrians conquered country after country. The King locked down the spread of knowledge in areas he controlled, crushing any whisper of Somas. Medical staff were taught that the euthanasia of children identified with the Soma gene was a mercy, that they would die in agony otherwise.

Since the resistance in Greece had been crushed about twenty-five years ago, only Northern Roma and Illyria remained truly free from Alexandria and Illyria's territory had been steadily shrinking.

Greece had formed a treaty with Alexandria that had given Alexandria the throne in everything but name. The Greek Princess Eurymenye, my mother, had been given to the current leader of Alexandria, King Cyrius Alexus, as a wife and hostage. Yep, that was good ol' Mom and Dad.

Elex and I were brothers. Half-brothers, technically, but we didn't make that distinction. He'd been born to an Illyrian slave, whereas I'd been born to the Queen.

I had other siblings out there, somewhere. At least, I still hoped they were alive. We had found out that our oldest brother, Davidus, had been the first Mageia that had partnered with Hel to free Mageians sent to the Machi, though we'd only learned it a few days ago. Hel had said he was somewhere in Illyria but hadn't spoken to him in years.

There were other kids out there too, most of them younger. We knew that Elex's twin, Erix, had been killed by Maalik while trying to escape when he realized he had Mageian powers.

The spray of the water brought me back to the present. I watched as Hel squeezed Elex's hand and I had to fight down a surge of envy. It wasn't that I had been interested in Helios at all. I mean, sure, he was beautiful even with his scars, but what I envied most was the connection they seemed to have. Despite everything my soul still longed for someone who would love me for me, not for the crown I would have worn.

As a boy I'd been isolated from everyone except my siblings. As a young man I'd learned quickly that anyone who expressed interest in me was probably looking for a way to get to my father. In the Legion…After what Maalik and Aurelius had done it had taken me a long time well to feel clean. While I'd never admitted to Elex what had happened I think he sensed it anyway. Let's just say he was a little overprotective. Not that relationships were a real thing in the Legion. Nor had I been that interested.

Living with Maalik those last few years had been torture, in every sense of the word. He had made my life a living hell with his unhealthy attraction to me. He'd nearly raped me a couple of times, only for me to escape. At least, until I was thrown in the dungeon. None of which I had ever told Elex, because it would, one, make him crazy with fury, and two, he would feel that he had somehow failed me or should have protected me. He looked tough on the outside, but inside my brother was a marshmallow.

I looked at him as he leaned back into the embrace of his Soma. His hair was longer than I had ever seen it, the bright sunlight almost gleaming off the shock of white among his black curls. He and Erix had been almost mirror images of each other, Erix's hair white with a black stripe, both of them with startlingly blue eyes.

Hel had gorgeous wavy blond hair and beautiful silver eyes. His golden hair hung down covering the right side of his face. He had been burned badly when he had survived an attack that had taken the life of his best friend and almost-Bonded, Orion. When we had first met him, he had insisted on hiding his face behind his hair or the hood of his jacket. He'd slowly started feeling more comfortable with us seeing his scars, but coming home seemed to have reignited some of his self-consciousness.

Hel had been captured by the Elusians and transported to the Machi to be just one more obstacle for the Mageians to overcome. The Elusians had expected him to battle the Mageia in the Machi Thanatos and end up killing or being killed himself. That had been a major miscalculation. Instead of killing Mageia, he'd allied with us and arranged for ships to spirit the Mageian competitors to his homeland. Over the last few years he had rescued almost five hundred Mageians.

Hel hadn't told us a lot about his life in Illyria other than the general political structure but his younger adopted sister, Betts, had shared enough to let me know that it wasn't necessarily a paradise. They had their problems with bigots and assholes. Hel hadn't been treated kindly when his Mageia had died. In Illyria, it was expected that a Soma would die rather than let their Mageia come to harm. Hel's only crime was having lived by some fluke of fate.

"You okay?" Elex asked.

"Just worried," Hel answered. "I still don't understand why Polemos wanted me to come back so urgently. The work I was doing in Heraklion was important."

We both nodded.

"I'm sure he knows," I said. "Otherwise he wouldn't have sent a whole team of Somas to replace you."

The arrival of his replacements had been a bit of a shock and had actually delayed our departure a little, since Hel wanted to make sure they had someplace safe to stay and our original base had been compromised. We were pretty sure they wouldn't hold any more Machi in Heraklion, but who knew? The Alexandrians might surprise us.

Betts was the captain of the Chrysalis, the ship that was bringing us to Illyria. She had brought word that the war leader of Illyria wanted Hel to return and sent a squad of unbonded Somas to replace him. No one knew exactly why he wanted Hel to come back. Hel said he had never met him. He had been named War Leader a few years back and the man was the reason Illyria had managed to avoid being completely overrun, so he got what he wanted.

"I wonder if he just wants to speed up the process of matching Somas to Mageia," I said.

Elex and Hel both jumped apart, as if only just remembering I was there. I chuckled at my brother's discomfiture as he quickly straightened his clothing.

The boat was brought into the Nymphaeum dock at Betts' able direction. It was a bit strange seeing a woman as young as Betts, who I'd come to know as a sassy spitfire, capably giving orders on the ship, but she obviously had the respect of her crew.

The boat itself had been a surprise, too. Unlike our experience, the Illyrian vehicles were powered by a combination of wind, electricity, and combustion engines. In between bouts of sickness I had hounded Betts for details about its construction. The strict control of information in Alexandria meant that Illyrian people had begun developing a technological edge that was helping equalize the war.

Illyria sat on top of some of the biggest reserves of oil and gas on the continent, which was another reason Alexandria wanted it. The Illyrian trade agreements with other countries was one of the reasons they had been able to resist being conquered for so long. Once Greece had fallen to Alexandrian ambition, though, the King had set his sites on Illyria and intensified the war against them.

The voyage from Heraklion to Illyria had been mostly uneventful. With the number of Water Mageians we had on board we had plenty of notice of any approaching craft and had managed to evade the few Alexandrian ships we had come across.

Admittedly, I had spent a large portion of the trip huddled over a bucket. I'd be happy to reach dry ground again; separation from my element was never fun, but at least the nausea was fading as we got closer to land. Hel told me it was common for unbonded Mageia to have this kind of response, and I just had to take his word for it.

The city of Nymphaeum, capital of Illyria, was unexpectedly beautiful. Located on the banks of the Alfelos river, the city was one of the primary harbors that served the Illyrian people. The coast of Illyria was dotted with harbors as many of the Illyrians were seafarers. Their fleet had protected them from Alexandrian sea attack, but the fleet was useless for protection from an enemy moving overland, and Alexandria had been making slow but steady progress across the continent.

Interspersed between buildings with modern splendor and color were ancient marble buildings, their stark white sheen making me think of the bleached bones of some long dead animal.

The boat slowly came to a halt and ropes were thrown to waiting dock hands to secure the mooring. A metal gangplank was connected to the boat to allow us to exit.

"See that?" Hel asked, pointing as we walked down the gangplank.

Rising up over the middle of the city was a great tower, taller than any of the surrounding buildings.

"What is it?" I asked.

"It's the Tower of Pyrgos," he said.

"Pyrgos? I thought this was Nymphaeum?" I asked.

"Pyrgos and Nymphaeum used to reside on opposite sides of the Alfelos. They both grew rapidly and eventually combined into one city under the name of Nymphaeum," Hel answered. "The Tower is where the government operates. That's where we will head, once we disembark."

I stared at the tall building and shook my head at how indefensible it looked. Might as well paint a big red target on it. I was beginning to doubt the wisdom of trusting these Illyrians in matters of strategy. A few teams of Fire or Earth Mageia could take that building down in a matter of minutes.

The docks were raucous. Fishing boats and private vessels abounded. The voices of the longshoremen loading and unloading cargo melded with the sounds of their equipment. Unlike in Alexandria, almost all of the heavy lifting was being performed by hand or machine, not magic.

"Are all these people Somas?" Elex asked.

Hel shook his head.

"Most of them are human," he answered, glancing around. "You might see a few Somas and Mageians here and there, but Bonded pairs are too valuable in battle to waste doing a lot of manual labor. Unless…"

"Unless what?" Elex asked.

"Somas who have given up on finding their Bonded are considered apelpismenos. Hopeless." His eyes took on a haunted look. "The apelpismenos tend to join suicide squads, or they—they leave Illyria altogether and go into exile. Sometimes they spend time working on the docks beforehand."

"Leave…" Elex began, understanding dawning on him. Helios had been in a form of self-imposed exile in Heraklion. He could have returned to Illyria years ago but had chosen to stay and help the other Mageia escape the Machi Thanatos arena.

"You are never fucking allowed to give up, do you hear me?" Elex growled fiercely, turning to Hel. He grabbed his lover's face with both hands. "If something ever happens to me, you live, asshole. You live. Do you understand?"

They stared into each other's eyes for a few minutes, before Hel finally nodded slightly. Elex nodded sharply in response, then released him and turned back to the view of the city. I knew my brother, though. He might be feigning nonchalance, but his knuckles were white where they gripped the rail.

"So where are your Mageia held?" he asked.

"They aren't ‘held' anywhere," Hel said patiently. He was at least a foot taller than my brother and was even a few inches taller than me. Elex was sensitive about his height, but I don't think I would have ever considered him delicate, except in comparison to his Bonded.

"The diasothike are full members of our society. They go where they want. Once we dock, we will head to the Tower Pavilion. It's where we have been quartering the Mageia we have rescued from the Machi until they are ready to find their own places."

"Diasothike?" I asked.

"The Rescued," Betts said smiling. "That's what we call the Mageia we've helped escape from the Machi. My people seem to like to name everything. Thank the goddess the trend to make acronyms of everything passed about a decade ago."

This wasn't the first time that Hel or Betts had told us Mageia were free in Illyria, but it was still hard to accept. We'd lived our whole lives in a society that subjugated our race, where we were third-class citizens at best. We were all afraid to trust it.

"Move it along, slackers!" Betts called loudly as we moved off the boat. "No gawking! We've got a schedule to keep!"

As she quickly and efficiently offloaded her Mageian cargo I looked at the sixty-odd magic users who came with us from Heraklion. Everyone was shuffling nervously on the dock, their meager possessions in packs on their backs or at their feet. We were literally arriving with just the clothes on our backs. Each of us wore the dark t-shirts we had been issued during the Machi. Each shirt had a small piece torn or cut from the shirt on the left side where the logos had been.

A grim smile teased my lips at the memory.

The battle had just ended and we had begun the grim task of cleaning and removing the bodies of the Alexandria soldiers out of our temporary home. I'd grabbed a bucket from the hall and went to the kitchen to get some cleaning supplies where I'd seen Elex leaning against the sink staring dazedly at the counter where he had set the head of our half-brother, Maalik. He stared into the face of our tormentor as if he couldn't look away. Hel was watching him helplessly, obviously unsure what to say to break Elex out of his strange funk.

Maalik had done obscenely horrible things to both of us over the years, and I was relieved he was dead. Yet the look in Elex's eyes tore at my heart. If I could have taken that look off his face by bringing Maalik back to life, I would have.

"Adelfos," I whispered as I approached him. Elex's eyes slowly rose to mine.

"Luke…" he whispered, looking up at me through reddened eyes, his voice small and lost. I could hear the unshed tears he was choking down. I knew what he was thinking: Maalik had tried to escape. He could have let him go, let him live, but Elex had followed and executed him and the guilt was killing him.

Hel and I had followed Elex as he chased Maalik as they ran through the tunnels that had been our haven. I'd been terrified of something happening to my brother when we were finally so close to freedom.

We had caught up to them just in time for me to save Elex from a hidden dagger Maalik had thrown at him. Tesseris Mageia or not, Elex hadn't seen it until it had been too late. Personally, I was used to Maalik's dirty tricks, so I had been prepared.

Elex had used his newly awakened powers to dismember Maalik but had somehow forced him to live for far longer than he should have. I remembered the sound of my half-brother's joints popping from their sockets, and it still turned my stomach. The sight of Maalik's head and torso floating above the waterfall was nightmare material. The stumps of his arms and legs had been cauterized by magic and, somehow, he had still been conscious.

I knew my brother; Elex was not a sadist. If the King and Maalik hadn't driven him to it, I doubt Elex would have ever killed anyone, much less prolonged their suffering like he had with Maalik. How did I ease his conscience over this death?

Elex was the fiercest, strongest, most protective person I had ever met in my life. He may have been physically smaller than me, but there had never been any doubt he was my big brother and one of the deadliest men I'd ever met. He lived up to the meaning of his name: "Man's Defender". He would move heaven and earth to defend those he loved. He had saved my life so many times that I had lost count. If he hadn't been in the Legion I was assigned to, I'm sure I would have died before I ever made it to Cadet.

That made it even harder to see him weighed down with guilt over Maalik's death.

"This isn't on you, Elex," I whispered, gripping his arm.

"It really kinda is…" he said, his voice trailing off, his eyes drifting over his hands where small whorls of Earth, Air, Fire and Water still spun.

"Maalik brought his death on himself, a thousand times over," I said.

"Yeah, but the way he died," he continued. "What I did…That's on me."

I looked at the dead face of my torturer and gave my brother the only truth I could.

"If you hadn't done it, I would have had to," I said, my voice echoing with the power of the earth. "And I…I would have made it last longer."

Elex and Hel both looked at me in shock.

"What? Did you think I didn't know everything he did over the years? How he tortured you? Had us both punished over nothing? After the fucking Calling?" I demanded. "I love you, and you have always tried to protect me while you were with me, which I appreciate. But you… You weren't always there, ‘Lex. You couldn't be. If you don't believe anything else I ever say, believe this: Maalik deserved to die in agony."

He looked at me, his eyes a stormy blue. It was an improvement from the lost look that had been there earlier.

"What do you mean?" he demanded.

I slammed the bucket on the floor, anger building in me. Maalik didn't deserve my brother's guilt.

"After you were sent to the Legion and he was named Crown Prince, I was alone with him and Aurelius for years, ‘Lex," I said. I glared at Maalik's bloody head. "Believe me, he earned every single second of agony he experienced. More, even."

I grabbed Maalik's bloody head by the hair and dropped it into the bucket where it landed with a wet thump.

The silence stretched for long moments before he spoke again.

"'Lex', huh?" he asked, a small smile quirking the corner of his mouth.

"Well, ‘asshole' has too many syllables, remember?" I said, bumping his shoulder with my own. Something in his mood seemed to break and I suddenly found his arm wrapped tightly around me.

"I love you, adelfos," he whispered.

"You, too," I responded, squeezing him back.

We took all the bodies and moved them to the nearest courtyard outside the base on what would turn out to be our last day on Heraklion, the job made easier by the use of our powers. The Chrysalis had arrived, and we gathered with all of the other remaining Mageians from the Machi. The Somas who crewed Betts' ship stood a respectful distance away as we gathered, except for Hel, who refused to leave my brother's side.

We had already found and burned the bodies of the few Mageians who had been killed during this Machi. The only bodies that remained were of the soldiers who had invaded our base. I had gathered what remained of our brother's body and brought it out to the courtyard, refusing to let anyone else perform the task. I needed the confirmation that Maalik was dead and could never hurt us again.

Illyrians and Legionnaire's had this in common: we burned the bodies of our honored dead, and we'd burn the bodies of the soldiers. They hadn't known the truth about what Alexandria was doing and we hadn't been able to give them the opportunity to switch sides like we had the Mageia in the Machi. Maalik, however, would not be among the ashes. Fuck him. He could rot.

Elex walked past the collected pieces of the corpse of our tormentor with a final glance, then paused. He pulled an envelope from his pocket. He stared at it for several moments without moving, the other Mageians around us quiet. He looked up at me, uncertainty plain on his face.

I had seen Elex writing something earlier that morning, but I hadn't read it and he hadn't shared it with me then. I didn't know what it contained, but I could guess.

"I don't know if I should leave it," he said, glancing at me, his eyes shadowed. "It might just make things worse."

After several long moments he handed me the envelope. It was unsealed. I looked at Elex questioningly and he nodded. I pulled out a thin sheet of paper and read the writing.

Cyrius,

Maalik was your son, but he was never our brother.

Allyour children should have mattered to you.

The world will know Alexandria's treachery.

The note was signed "Elex Taulos Lapydes".

The wind blew gently, the sunlight warm on my skin. It was so different from the cold I felt in my heart when I looked at my father's name.

"Give me your pen," I said, holding my hand out to Elex.

He looked at me for a long moment before handing me a pen from his pocket. I scrawled my name below his, then paused before adding a few lines below our signatures, not entirely sure why I felt the need to add them, but it felt…right. Once I was done, I put the paper back into the envelope and knelt, tucking the missive between Maalik's dead fingers.

"I want him to know," I heard myself say.

"Want who to know?" Helios asked from behind my brother.

"The King," I said bitterly. "I want him to know he failed, that he didn't kill us, and that we're coming for him."

I turned to the other Mageia.

"Do you hear me?" I yelled. "The Elusians have subjugated our people for too long! We have fought, bled and died for them for centuries. No more!"

From my belt I yanked the metal and stone knife I had created when Maalik had attacked Elex. It was also the knife that had ended up severing Maalik's head from his body. I jerked the fabric of the shirt I wore where the Alexandrian log was embroidered and brought the knife down across the cloth, cutting cleanly through the material.

"No more! No surrender!" I yelled, holding the scrap of cloth aloft.

"No retreat!" thundered the voices of the Mageia around us.

I dropped the scrap to the ground. The crowd was quiet for a moment, then Deliah stepped forward and repeated the gesture. One by one, the Mageia who had joined us in Heraklion walked up, cut the logos from their shirts and dropped them to the ground at my feet in front of Maalik's bloody corpse. By the time they were done there were logos from Alexandria, Greece, and Nova Roma fluttering in the breeze.

I left the courtyard without a backward glance, the words I'd written blazing like fire in my brain. They were the same words I'd spoken years ago when my powers had first manifested.

Under Elex's signature I had added my own. Not quite certain why, I had added "Sons of Hecate" beneath.

I'd never call him Father again. Fuck you, Cyrius.